Storytellersunplugged

Where Words Meet

MORT WAXES POETIC

by Mort Castle

Last month we had some fun here, some of us, choosing to publish fiction.

This month, I am going to share with you some poetry.

This is prompted by my being asked a question — the question — the other day when I was working with high school freshmen. This was a new crew, some really tuned in to this “writing thing,” some not quite sure if I was a substitute teacher, NBA, college, or Army recruiter, or apprentice custodian, and some in telepathic touch with their native planets.

But this guy asks, “You’ve really devoted your whole life to this, haven’t you? Could you explain why?”

I first had to explain why a long time back. The why came at a bad time: I had given up the sinecure of the daily teaching gig and I wasn’t bringing in a whole lot of dollars. I was averaging seven to 12 rejections for every short story acceptance. The publisher of my last book had gone under. My then agent said, “Damned if I can figure why we’re not getting anywhere but we’re not so we might as well break up.”

Then I got a nice day’s workshop at a high school in Chicago.

And then, just about a year later, I heard from a kid who’d been in that workshop.

And then I knew why I had signed on for the duration in this craft and sullen art, knew it all over again. Renewal, bucky.

And I had a poem.

And every so often I read the poem again. My hairline has changed since the poem was written, my chin has grown another to keep it company, I’ve known the deaths of at least as many friends and family and dreams as the typical guy my age, but that poem still talks to me about why it is I do what I do … still do and will do until they pry my …

And why I encourage others to go ye and do likewise.

This is the poem:

the high school writers’ workshopThe question is asked as it is always asked, this time by a young man (so young, I think, he is almost brand new) with new wave hair and the shrugging casual innocence of Wally Cleaver.

“Why write?”

I have done years of these workshops but for some reason, the answer doesn’t simply snap back this time, no, not this time, because I find myself thinking of my last year’s writing income, less than I’d have earned painting numbers on curbs all summer.

And I’m thinking of my friend, my teacher, Bill, a poet, dead at 44, dead by his own hand that held the hypodermics and the pills,

and thinking of a fools’ conga line of American authors who’ve drunk-staggered up to claim their Nobel Prizes…

Hey, I am here to run a workshop: If you have questions, I have answers.

“You write because you have something to say…”

We get on with it, discuss elements of fiction and poetry; at the end of the day, I have a check for $250, not a bad day’s work, better than I’d earn painting numbers on curbs.

A year or so later, the questioning young man sends me a copy of his poem printed in his school’s literary magazine.

The poem’s last lines are: I knew I knew how to love/but only after my brother died.

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3. PLAYING WITH FORM
4. Change of Scene
5. NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

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